DIARY

Week Three (15th – 21st June)

Excavation site diary

Week 3 began with a busy Open Day on Sunday. Despite the blustery weather,
many people visited, coming from Bressay and further afield. There was
much discussion about how burnt mounds may have been used and great interest
in why some Shetland examples are so much more elaborate than those found
elsewhere. Many people said that they would be curious to see 'hot stone
technology' in action- boding well for the reconstruction and activities
planned for the future.

Visitors to the Open Day

During the week, the archaeologists continued to excavate the mound with
the help of local volunteers Catherine, Vicki, Barbara and Zoe. The work
confirmed suspicions that at least one pit has been cut into the top of
the mound. This seemed to have occurred long after the burnt mound had
gone out of use. It is possible that the pit served as a “tattie store”,
and during a survey on West Burra, EASE archaeologists had found another
burnt mound which had been specially adapted for storing potatoes. This
is not as improbable as it might seem. The mound, comprising mainly of
burnt stone, would provide a dry and probably frost-free environment.
There may well be other uses to which abandoned burnt mounds have been
put, and it is certainly recorded that many were quarried away to provide
hardcore for roads.

Excavation through the mound, with the pit on the left hand side of the
section

A new excavation trench was also begun, placed to cut through one side
of the mound down to the old ground surface below. This was intended to
provide useful information about the formation of the mound and about
the nature of the land surface upon which it was built. It is suspected
that this was a boggy area, even in the Bronze Age, but there was simply
not the time, nor the resources, to investigate these questions during
the original excavation. Digging the trench was started by hand, with
Tessa and Amanda doing the hard labour!

The building itself has two passageways. The main one leads inland and
at a right angle to the coast edge. At the beach end of this corridor
is the tank; at the other end, the hearth cell. Just before reaching the
hearth, a second passageway branches off to the right (south). At the
end of this second passage are three small cells, and in plan, the passage
and rooms look like the stem and leaves of a clover.

Jakob worked within the main passageway and excavated within the hearth
cell. He uncovered several layers of paving; as suspected, the floor in
this area had to be replaced on numerous occasions due to the damage inflicted
by high temperatures. The removal of paving from the passageway in front
of the hearth revealed part of a stone-lined drain. This is a very interesting
discovery as the drain had not been seen before.

The other, clover-shaped, passageway had been photographed and numbered
by Rick last week, and the stonework was now ready to move.

Passageway before dismantling

Reconstruction site diary

The first phase of dismantling the structures took place at the beginning
of the week. A large group of local volunteers assembled on site, together
with tractors and trailers, ready for the task of moving the stones.

Tractors and trailers

The walls were constructed of several huge boulders, with short stretches
of dry-stone walling between them. The first job was to dismantle the
smaller walls, and many local volunteers helped to form a crocodile, passing
stones from the site up to masonry bags lying on the trailers.
Placing the stones in bags helped to keep the elements of each segment
of wall together.

The volunteers had soon filled the bags, and next it was the turn of
the larger orthostats. These were trussed up with straps and hoisted out
of the trench by local farmer David Manson using a mechanical arm attachment to his tractor.

Douglas and Maurice preparing stones for removal from the site

Once the trailers were full, they were drawn by a convoy of tractors
to the reconstruction area. Maurice and David were helped by Douglas Coutts,
Bernard Redman and Tom to unload the stones at the plot of land next to
the newly dug hole. They placed the stones carefully in different locations,
keeping masonry from the various segments of walling together, and ensuring
that the labels were facing upwards so that they could be easily located
once the reconstruction began.